It’s good to start your blog with an eye-catching statistic: The North American auto industry loses over $750 million in lost pallets alone. That’s just the pallets. What about the things that were on the pallets? What about all the other equipment, parts and tools necessary for the production process? If you don’t know where your assets are then you’re heading for significant bottlenecks – and even extended downtime. Introducing IoT-driven solutions – such as Asset Track for Manufacturing solution from OpenText™ – can deliver real time visibility over the location of all your assets.
Today, asset tracking is one of the strongest use case for IoT investment, with estimates suggesting there will be over 260 billion IoT tracking devices deployed worldwide by 2027. And, it’s easy to see why.
Without complete asset visibility, it’s not possible to optimize your inventory management or asset performance. In some ways, staff spending hours searching for parts and equipment is the least of the asset tracking challenges. If you don’t know where your asset is then you don’t know what it’s doing – or if it’s doing anything at all. You don’t know your current inventory levels and whether they need replenished, replaced, or repaired. You don’t know if assets are moving as they should along your production process or your supply chain, undermining activities such as just-in-time production.
Achieving end-to-end asset visibility
IoT allows you to track all assets at a production line, plant or enterprise level. IoT asset tracking solutions continuously record the location and movement of assets – from individual tools to complete pieces of machinery – and periodically or in real time display that information on pre-defined dashboards.
In addition, many IoT asset tracking solutions can be configured to automatically send out warnings or notices with location information when an asset hasn’t moved to the next stage of production within the correct amount of time. GPS and geo-fencing functionality allows you to continuously monitor mobile assets and can notify you immediately if they move outside the defined area or deviates from the defined path.
IoT asset tracking delivers unparalleled control for manufacturers that will provide massive benefits, including:
- Better inventory turns and a reduction in out-of-stock events
- Cost reduction through elimination of manual tracking and searching for lost or misplaced assets
- Improved asset utilization and more efficient production processes
- Reduction of risk and cost associated with ‘ghost’ assets
- Accurate, real time information on asset status securely available to everyone who needs it
However, implementing an effective IoT asset tracking strategy remains challenging in itself. You must find a way to maximize the value of data that is coming from the IoT devices attached to your assets.
Introducing Asset Track for Manufacturing from OpenText
Asset Track for Manufacturing from OpenText uses location-based services to pinpoint an asset’s location in real time. You are able to track the location and movement of assets in real time to reduce production bottlenecks, optimize roués and reduce lost, stolen or misplaced assets. Once an asset is registered a Bluetooth device is attached to the asset allowing the asset’s location to be tracked in real time to improve performance across operations and maintenance.
The tracking application is part of the OpenText portfolio of track and trace solutions. The portfolio uses the OpenText IoT Platform for the collection, orchestration, and governance of the data from the identified and verified asset as it operates. The data is used to create a digital twin of the asset, integrating with core models and other business and operational business applications. By developing a digital twin of every asset, the portfolio facilitates the optimization of all assets in your organization across their entire lifecycle.
A complete solution for end-to-end asset visibility
In addition to Asset Track for Manufacturing, the OpenText track and trace portfolio includes:
Asset Intelligence for Manufacturing
The Asset Intelligence solution is the foundation of the OpenText track and trace system that allows you to create and manage an accurate, real time inventory of all your assets. The application enables you to collect a rich set of information – both IoT and related data and documentation – to build a digital twin of the asset.
Asset Monitor for Manufacturing
The Asset Monitor solution builds upon Asset Track to deliver data on the asset’s condition, health and performance to support activities such as condition-based, predictive and prescriptive maintenance operations.
Asset Insights for Manufacturing
The Asset Insights solution empowers an organization to visualize all of their assets as an ecosystem, see an exception dashboard to quickly identify assets that are not performing as expected or are missing in action.
Find out more about the OpenText range of digital solutions for manufacturing, visit our web page.
